Duruthian Catacombs

[pasis]

The reason I stay away from really harsh lighting and shadows is because while it may look very realistic, in my mind it stops making sense once the players are involved.

For example, if I make a map where the inside of a building is dark with just a sliver of light coming in through a barely opened door, it looks cool. But what happens when the players open the door? The room is still dark. What if they're carrying their own light source, as they're likely to do?

Not to say the images aren't nice (I always find it funny when I can point to the exact texture someone used in my own Textures folder), but I've found it a technique that seems like a waste on battlemaps.

Indeed there are different needs for every (battle)map and therefore when this will be finished I will include two different versions. One with specific lights and shadows and another "natural" one without any special effects. I have already created the map this in mind and all special things (light sources, items etc) can be removed in just few clicks.

What's the difficulty exactly? It looks okay to me, though it's a bit unclear what's going on with the wall at the south end of the fire pit room. Has it collapsed into a pile of dirt strewn across the floor? The two just sort of fade into one another.

I had challenges especially creating the shadows and finding a reasonable way to make corrections to them if (and when) I change the corridor layouts. The only solution I could come up with is to make the layout first and worry about the lighting afterwards. But that's not how I work. I couldn't keep my hands away from the shadows and I constantly had to recreate something I had finished 10min ago.

VERY NICE, Rep! I noticed you made the light rays constantly fuzzy. This isn't actually how this realistically works. The further you are away from the source, the more the light scatters.

I made you a little help-pic =)

That is true. I will modify the shadows and I also need to pay attention on indirect light (amount of light and the color) in the corridors. One example of this is the orange light in the corridor from the fire. Even though the direct light doesn't hit the floor or the walls all the way, they still have a hint of orange in them.